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Silica microspheres were made by melting the tip of a standard telecom fiber and were coated with a 70SiO2- 30 HfO2sol-gel derived glass activated by 0.3 mol % of Er3+ions. The samples were coated using a dip coating apparatus. The thickness of the coating was estimated to be around 1 m. The whispering gallery modes of the coated resonator were studied using a full taper - microsphere coupling setup. Upon excitation at 1480 nm sharp peaks at wavelengths 1540- 1565 nm were observed. They were attributed to the whispering gallery modes of the microsphere falling in the wavelength range of the erbium emission.

Coating of spherical microresonators is a very promising technique for optimizing their optical properties. Optical coatings are constituted by glasses, polymer, and glass ceramics, passive or activated by luminescent species, Glass ceramic activated by rare earth ions are nanocomposite systems that exhibit specific morphologic, structural and spectroscopic properties allowing to develop interesting new physical concepts, for instance the mechanism related to the transparency, as well as novel photonic devices based on the enhancement of the luminescence. At the state of art the fabrication techniques based on bottom-up and top-down approaches appear to be viable although a specific effort is required to achieve the necessary reliability and reproducibility of the preparation protocols. In particular, the dependence of the final product on the specific parent glass and on the employed synthesis still remain an important task of the research in material science. Looking to application, the enhanced spectroscopic properties typical of glass ceramic in respect to those of the amorphous structures constitute an important point for the development of integrated optics devices, including coating of spherical microresonators. Here we present a review regarding spherical microresonators coated by glass and glass-ceramic film activated by Er3+ions. Er3+ions appear to be embedded in a crystalline or amorphous environment and the lifetime dynamic is influenced by the geometry and by the morphology of the system. Photoluminescence results and morphologic properties are discussed for both amorphous and glass ceramic films.